Assesments Driven me Nuts!

My week started with all pleasant things. I was happy to open the week 5 content as there were rubrics and the extra work as well. I'm bit familiar with rubrics as I had done it few times before. I love this new way of evaluating the students. All these alternative assessments keep the students relaxed in their studies. If not almost all of them get stressed due to the semester end assessment which determines the entire future of the learner. It was a thing I deadened once as a student. Also by having assessed many skills separately, we as teachers get to know about our students' capabilities well. Therefore, this  system works well with languages too. 

I am familiar with Problem Based Learning, which is quite the same. It does wonders on students and they never understand that they are learning the language. Also, this task improves learner's thinking line and decision making skills. According to my experience with these young learners, they  love to face challenges and achieve things out of the hard way. 

Webquest is the ideal tool which stressed me out this time. It gave me enormous trouble as I was struggling with a poor Internet connection due to heavy downpours.  I never waited this long to complete my work, but things are getting delayed due to some reason.

With all these obstacles coming to put me down, I never gave up. I read all the material provided, digested what I need for the week's task (Because, I believe there's more attentive reading to be done on these subject areas) and ended up doing well. I'm happy about it and looking forward to week 6!

End of Another Week's Excitment

Week four dawned with same enthusiasm and curiosity to know what is NEW on this week. How much to read, what to add to Delicious, any new Web tools to develop etc. From the first glance I realised the that Donna had put us at ease in reading when compared to the previous week. Out of all the reading material, I prefer the article on Lesson Plan instructions. All the important items in a lesson is clearly described in there. It gives a clear idea for anybody to end up in writing good lesson plans. Reading Activities through E-books and Using Internet in Writing are the other articles which got my attention most. I enjoyed reading them as well as exploring Multi-skill websites.

Though some links didn't get open and not the latest versions, I still found things new to me. As always, I felt the novelty in following this course. There's often  new things to explore, new discoveries to be made and more than anything, there's new concepts to think about. I enjoy this atmosphere and would like to thanks our dear teacher and my dear colleagues who keep us all on the move all the time.

Lets Gear Up for the Week 5!

Chandy

What a Week? Where Did It Go? - Week 3

As Monday dawned here in Sri Lanka, I was logging into the home page of our’s several times to see if this week's material are available. After trying several impatient attempts here they are!!! I was enthusiastic to have them all, but when I went down the page I felt bit suffocative to see a load of reading materials piled up together. When I read Donn's instructions for the week I knew she expected us to comment on one thing, out of many. But to select the one thing I had to read the whole lot. As I love my reading I was not to miss any. Therefore, I thought of going from the very first reading material.

All of a sudden a thought stuck me. Why should I start with reading first, why can't I make my Delicious Pages? This led me to be the first person to create Delicious Pages. I was quite happy with my achievement and read again Donna's post to realize that I should add links as well. While trying to add links something went wrong and I immediately deleted my Delicious Pages. That's why most of you might have not seen my name on the top of the list! Then I added my links and did well, but still I was having problems in logging from my URL. I was medalling with this Delicious 'food' for so long and forgotten my other duties to fulfil.

I was stressed in remembering my pile of reading to do. On top of it, I was compelled to sacrifice two days due to a personal matter. After losing those valuable hours plus my Delicious pages not opening to my colleagues and Donna, I was at a loss. I knew that I've got the weekend too, but I'm not a last minute person who rushes through to do things. My style is to start early and finish almost everything by Friday and to relax until the next thing start. But this week it didn't happen in the normal way and I'm still at work on Saturday night instead of reading my novel by the bedside! All in all, hopefully I'm at the end of submitting all the assignments due for week 3.

When I look back, I'm quite satisfied with the material we acquainted, the new techniques we discovered etc. I was quite amazed to discover my Delicious pages. My favourite sites are just a click away from any online computer either at home or at work, which is very convenient. I'd love to do more exploration in adding things to make it better. A BIG thank you always goes to our Dear teacher for piling up all these attractive stuff for us to get amazed by.

I felt sad for not reading and digesting all the reading stuff provided. Time constrain prevented me from analysing and digesting the contents well. But as we got the links and the reading intact with us, we could leisurely go through them to discover more wonders.

At the same time I'm very grateful to Donna for exposing us to the Project Reports written by the past participants. It gave a rough idea on what type of studies we have to think and plan. If we go back and read again these reports carefully, I'm sure we could learn and add more things to our future endeavours.

As one more day is left for me from this week, I think still I'm ahead of my work. I'm sure I'll have time to read my novel, do some Sunday cooking for the family and get ready to face the Week 4!

Thanks everybody who helped me in sending posts and comments my way. Donna, thanks in million for the correct guidance and kind concern extended towards us. Anticipate more challenging stuff for the coming week!

Have A fantastic Weekend My Dear Friends!

Dawning of Week 2

Hello My Friends,

After learning many new things during the first week of our Web Skills course, I was looking forward to week 2. Before I began my very first Online course I was bit worried whether I'll find time to get on with it after meeting all the deadlines as well. But when I reached the first week without breaking into halves, I anticipated the second week to be the same. 

When I saw Donna's email informing us now things for the second week is officially on, I rushed to open my email. I was bit taken aback after seeing all the reading I have to do. Bloom's taxonomy, ABCD model of writing Objectives, First step in writing the project..... all these new ideas started to entangle in my mind. But slowly it started to untangle when I started to read the material and started to do the tasks one by one. As we have the total freedom to reach Donna anytime to clarify everything, it has become a great help to run the things smoothly.

What impressed me mostly were the ABCD method of writing the objectives and the stack of search engines which enabled me to go into many resourceful sites. I'm sure my students will benefit after knowing some of these search engines too.

Though its just two week which had passed, I feel like being in this course for a month or so!!!! I think its to do with the new things we learn every day. It keeps us busy and exciting throughout the week. I have a naval feeling that I'm seeing and thinking about matters deeply and in a different way. I like that feeling and hope to get exposed to many more new things and face the challenge well.